November 14, 2012

When ABG Shipyard recently said that
it was exiting the Haldia docks of the Kolkata Port Trust, it blamed
"vested interests" for causing a great loss to the national
exchequer. Haldia Bulk Terminals, a joint venture between homegrown ABG
Infralogistics and French company Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, had been contracted
to operate two mechanised berths, but, it alleged, cargo was diverted to the
expensive manual berths. While Haldia Bulk Terminals charged the Kolkata Port
Trust Rs 75 per tonne of cargo, the manual berths charged Rs 150 and above.
That was the loss to the exchequer the company was referring to; what about the
vested interests?

The vested interests the company was
alluding to is Ripley & Co promoted by Swapan Sadhan Bose, aka Tutu Bose or
Tutuda, a familiar face in Kolkata's business circuit, but little known about.
In a press release issued on September 28, Haldia Bulk Terminals accused Ripley
of fomenting trouble at the docks. Ripley, incorporated in 1946, operates seven
manual berths at Haldia, which together handle almost 50 per cent of the
non-mechanised cargo at Haldia.

In 2010, when Haldia Bulk Terminals
signed an agreement with the Kolkata Port Trust to operate two mechanized
berths till 2020, it unknowingly encroached into what is Bose's territory, the
Haldia Dock Complex. Friend-turned-foe and former Tamluk MP Lakshman Seth, who
was also the chairman of the Haldia Development Authority, has alleged that
onshore operations at Haldia are handled by Bose without any competitive
bidding for several decades, flouting all rules of the Indian Port Trust Act.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the former chief minister of West Bengal, said on
Sunday: "At Haldia, one cargo-handling agency was driven out to give way
to a company run by a Trinamool Congress MP." The lawmaker he was
referring to was unmistakably Srinjoy, Bose's son.

Turnover: Company website lists a
turnover of Rs 300 crore for 2008-09

Mission: To provide quality service to
customers and strive to enhance international trade

Political links: Former Rajya Sabha MP
from West Bengal, close to Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee; son
Srinjoy is a Rajya Sabha member from the Trinamool Congress

People connected to Haldia, even
remotely, know that Bose has a virtual monopoly on its onshore operations.
That's perhaps why Haldia Bulk Terminals has said that it found the going tough
right from the beginning. The fight over cargo spilled into the public domain
in August this year when Haldia Bulk Terminals wrote to the Kolkata Port Trust
accusing it of failing to make good on its promise of cargo, resulting in the
company finding it hard to keep its two berths operational. (Haldia Bulk
Terminals had invested Rs 160 crore on the equipment for the two berths; its
accumulated losses stood at Rs 60 crore.) The company said it would be forced
to suspend operations if the cargo allocation didn't change. In fact, it
stopped work soon after that. The Kolkata Port Trust, in turn, moved the
Calcutta High Court seeking a direction to Haldia Port Terminal to resume work.
The court agreed but asked the Kolkata Port Trust to look into Haldia Bulk
Terminals' plea for more cargo. Work resumed but any attempts to divert cargo
from the non-mechanised berths were resisted by workers from the manual berths.
Labour, in West Bengal, has always been a highly emotive issue. A bigger
stumbling block for Haldia Bulk Terminals couldn't have happened.

A month later, the company began to
take names openly. The September 28 press statement from Haldia Bulk Terminals
read: "After being assured by the Kolkata Port Trust that it was safe to
work inside HDC (Haldia Dock Complex), Haldia Bulk Terminals made an attempt to
resume operation today. Haldia Bulk Terminals’ employees and port officials
were attacked by a mob of about 400 persons while working inside the port.
Former Haldia Bulk Terminals employees, Cargo pool and Ripley's employees were
clearly identified among the mob." A section of the Kolkata Port Trust
officials had also alleged that Ripley had written a letter to its employees on
September 14 that if additional cargo was allocated to Haldia Bulk Terminals,
according to the Calcutta High Court order, then the company may have to go for
retrenchment of workers. The sequence of events thereafter is well known.

Ripley, however, is just one of Bose's
many companies; there are many outfits — from stevedoring and cargo-handling to
transport — owned by Bose that rule over Haldia. According to Ripley's website,
it is the flagship of a large group that has diversified businesses like
cargo-handling, customs clearance, stevedoring, operation and maintenance of
berth, mining, transportation, exports and news publication. Its mission, as
declared on the website, is "to provide quality services to customers and
grow as one of the leading logistics organisations in India. It also desires to
utilise expertise for enhancing international trade." Several attempts to
reach Ripley, Bose, and his son, Shoumik, who is in charge of Ripley
operations, proved futile. A questionnaire sent to Bose and Ripley's official
email address didn’t elicit any response; a visit to the Ripley office didn’t
yield any result.

The Ripley group's turnover in 2008-09
was Rs 300 crore. It's anybody's guess how big Bose's empire is today. The
family-owned E C Bose & Company has just completed 160 years in
stevedoring. Bose has today expanded his port operations across Paradeep,
Vishakhapatnam, Tuticorin and Chennai. While stevedoring and cargo handling is
the cash cow, the business interests are diverse. A Kolkata-based industrialist
says that Bose has been allotted some agricultural land in Ethiopia. In Dubai,
where Bose spends more than half his time now, he runs Radio Asia Network and
Dolphin Recording Studio. The radio network — Radio Asia (AM) in Malayalam,
Suno 1024 (FM) in Hindi/Urdu and Super 947 (FM) in Malayalam and Tamil —
reaches out to Indians in West Asia. The interest in media is not new, though.
The initial diversification for Bose happened through Bengali newspaper
Sangbad Pratidin in August 1992. Though not the official mouthpiece of
the Trinamool Congress, it is considered to be a good cousin. In the
mid-1990s, he launched the Kolkata edition of The Asian Age, which he exited towards
the end of the decade by selling a 74 per cent stake to Vijay Mallya.

Much like business interests, Bose's
political affiliation has also varied over the years. In the early years, Bose
was known to be close to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and was said
to have some business ties with late Jyoti Basu's son, Chandan Basu. It was
during those times that Bose acquired a 74 per cent stake in state-owned
Niramoy Polyclinic (now AMRI) along with S K Todi, also known for his Left
leanings. It was given on lease to the consortium. Later, in 1996, Bose sold
his stake to Emami. (This hospital was in news last December when a fire there
killed 91 people; Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee retaliated by arresting six
Marwari directors of the hospital.) But not just the communists, Bose
maintained close ties with the Congress as well. "He always had great
contacts. When I had some issues with my business, he offered help to resolve
it and that was much before he joined the Trinamool Congress," an
industrialist recalls.

Bose crossed over to the Trinamool
Congress in early 2000. It was his political ambition that made him do so and
he is Banerjee's man for all seasons. In 2005, he became a Member of
Parliament, backed by the Trinamool Congress, and since then there has been no
looking back. Today, Bose is pretty much considered to be the economic backbone
of the party that runs a cash-strapped state. His son, Srinjoy, has taken his
place in the Rajya Sabha from the Trinamool Congress.

Though Bose keeps his business
interests low-key, he flaunts his affiliation with the Mohun Bagan Athletic
Club. For decades he has been the president of the club. It was his initiative
to bring in Mallya who now owns the club. "I used to think Tutu owns the
club," an industrialist says. Though the recent fiasco has brought Bose's
port operations to the fore, for all the wrong reasons, people who operate at
Haldia describe him as "a smart, effective businessman who knows how to
get his work done".